In the manufacture of flat rolled metal, it is the practice to produce the web product with a greater width than is required by the end user and to subsequently slit the web into narrower strips of the desired lateral dimension. According to the practice, the metal web is coiled following rolling, after which, in a separate operation, the coiled web is placed on an uncoiler, unwound, trained through a slitting station and the so-produced strips rewound on the coiler as a number of separate coils.
An improved practice for the production of coiled strip is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 713,599, 818,795 and 819,313, filed Aug. 12, 1976, July 25, 1977 and July 27, 1977 respectively. According to this improved practice, following rolling of the metal, the web is slit along lines parallel to its edge in a manner that produces parting lines containing intermittently spaced tabs that interconnect the adjacent edges of the strips whereby, upon coiling, there results a construct containing a plurality of coils joined by frangible connections. It is contemplated that shipment of the coil and the majority of the handling operations thereof will be undertaken with the construct intact. The constructs are arranged such that in some applications, individual coils can, as desired, be detached intact from the construct and subsequently unwound, as, for example, at a press or punch, to feed the contained strip material to the tool.
Coil constructs contemplated for use in these applications are sheet metal rolls that may be upwards of four feet in diameter and over ten tons in weight with individual coils in the construct each weighing upwards of four hundred pounds per inch of width. Besides requiring forces as great as 10,000 p.s.i. to detach an individual coil from a construct, it will be appreciated that heavy equipment and considerable effort is required to thereafter transfer the detached coil to an uncoiler, or the like, to permit the coiled strip to be dispensed to the tool by unwinding.
It is, accordingly, toward equipment that facilitates the detachment of individual coils from a construct and the elimination of the intermediate handling of the detached coil heretofore required to operatively position it on an uncoiler that the present invention is directed.